Add the U’s School of Medicine to the list of agencies that have a special approach to lobby legislators for extra funding in this year of heavy budget cuts.
Thursday U officials announced the school needs $15 million in ongoing funds to maintain the quality care and training programs at the state’s only medical school.
During the legislative session, lawmakers are slammed with hundreds of proposals for increased funding. This year’s economic slow-down forced lawmakers to cut the current year’s budget. Although the outline for next year’s budget has yet to be drawn, lawmakers project a lean year for all state agencies.
But despite the economic hard times, U Senior Vice President for Health Sciences Lorris Betz remains optimistic that the school of medicine will get an increase in state funding.
“It is never a good year to ask the legislature for such a large increase. Money is always tight,” he said. “But when times are tight, the state finds extraordinary ways to meet its needs.”
One “extraordinary” means of creating new monies is a bill that would amend the state cigarette tax, increasing it and giving the additional funds to needy programs, including the U’s School of Medicine.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Carl Saunders, R-Davis/Weber, would create $4 million for the school each year.
The School of Medicine also printed thousands of cards for faculty, staff, students, researchers, patients and members of the community to sign and give to their legislators asking them to support funding for the medical school.
Without the money, Betz said the school will lose its national reputation as a leader in research.
The U would continue to lose excellent doctors to other schools with larger, state funded salaries, consequently decreasing the quality of the students’ education, he said.
Without the needed funding, the state’s economy would also suffer losing businesses and research projects resulting from economical spin-offs of the biomedical research programs, Betz said.
Last year the U received $1.5 million in one-time funding from the legislature to help the situation.
The small momentary donations help, “but the problem won’t go away without ongoing funding. Without it, every year the problem will only get worse,” Betz said.
As a result of the lack of funding, the medical school has slid 10 spots in the rankings of the nations top medical training facilities as a result of uncompetitive wages for faculty.
Betz said U doctors are paid 30 percent less than their peers nationally. The state also allots fewer dollars per student than any state with a medical program in the country.
“We desperately need the money to give our students the quality education we need to provide as well as provide the community with the doctors of our state,” Betz said.
U officials plan to use the $15 million to replace funding skimmed off the top of clinical programs and put it back into salaries.